There was no internet back then, so all our paperwork had been mailed to ISS. We arrived the day before the IRC and received our packet of open positions, conference schedule, and the huge ISS Directory of Overseas Schools.
I LOVED that book. So many dreamy possibilities. We read every page, folded down corners, made notes in the margins, and added sticky notes for easy reference.
Peeking into the arena room, where we would meet recruiters and schedule interviews the next day, we quickly realized schools were organized by city, not country. There were so many cities we had never heard of and without Google in our pockets, we couldn’t quickly look them up. That evening, we found a bookstore, bought an atlas, and carried it around with our directory. Our conference bag got heavier, but our world was getting bigger.
Once the conference got started, we regularly checked folders in the communication room hoping for interview invitations. Finding a small card from a school inside was exciting. We were newcomers to the international school scene, and people were incredibly kind. The amazing Jane Larsson was our ISS person that year, and we felt so supported by her and by the whole organization. Alongside Jane, experienced delegates willingly shared what they knew about schools, healthcare, and what to look for in a package. Sometimes the best information came from the people standing in line with us.
In fact, we stepped out of the Jakarta line and into the Jeddah line next to it. Another delegate told us the school was looking specifically for teaching couples and her friends enjoyed teaching there. Six months later, we landed in Saudi Arabia, and our 30+ year “two year” adventure began!
Saudi Arabia was unlike anywhere we had ever been. Living there amplified for me the importance of understanding people and cultures different from my own. Travel opened my worldview in ways I could not have anticipated. It was also our first introduction to NESA, the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools, and to regional organizations as powerful hubs for connection and professional learning. Suddenly, our professional community stretched well beyond the walls of our own school.
A few years later, ISS hired us to work at one of their small schools in Indonesia. As the PK-8 librarian, I learned more about the depth of ISS services. The folks in school supply understood the challenges of getting resources to remote schools like ours. Our orders magically arrived just in time.
Some of those magical boxes contained professional journals that connected our little school to research and ideas shaking up education across the world. I developed a professional learning resource corner in the library and led professional book groups. Our faculty read, talked, questioned, tried new ideas, and learned together. Looking back, it was one of my first experiences understanding professional learning as a system rather than a singular approach to learning.
That little ISS school also gave us an extraordinary community. Our own two children were elementary students there, and the people we worked with were also their teachers. For me, the work was both professional and personal.
That community made our eventual departure especially meaningful. When we decided it was time to move on and our colleagues learned we had registered for another ISS IRC, someone found an older ISS Directory and passed it around the faculty. Everyone added notes next to schools they thought we would like and offered plenty of opinions.
Throughout the directory were handwritten comments like, “Put your name in here. Great package. Great food. Fun shopping.” Schools were highlighted and starred. The note on the first page ended with, “Before you accept a job offer, please ensure that it’s somewhere that we’d like to go next.”
This IRC felt very different from our first. We were no longer a young couple with a baby looking for an adventure. Our children were in grades three and five. Our son was about to enter middle school, and both children wanted to go somewhere they could stay, make friends, explore new interests, and not worry about moving again. This time, we were interviewing schools as much as they were interviewing us. The match wasn’t just for two of us anymore. It needed to be right for all four.
It was 2003, war in Iraq appeared imminent, and we couldn’t imagine leaving the kids behind in another country while we traveled to the job fair in New York City. Our brother-in-law, their favorite Uncle Dave, met us there to entertain and care for the kids. We promised everyone that if we got international school jobs, we would celebrate by seeing The Lion King on Broadway.
By then, ISS had moved to a digital application process. Thankfully, we also still had an ISS representative in our corner, making connections and singing our praises to potential schools.
Before leaving Indonesia, we had identified ten schools with positions that could work for both my husband and me. By the time we arrived, nearly all of those combinations were gone. Our top choice, the American School of Warsaw, was still possible.
The tables in the arena were still set up alphabetically by city, but this time we knew where those cities were. In just ten years, we had become the “experienced delegates” offering ideas and suggestions to people at their first fair. We headed straight for the Warsaw table. After two very full days of interviews and plenty of late-night planning, stressing, and strategizing, we excitedly accepted positions at ASW.
As promised, the night before departing New York, we took Dave and the kids to see The Lion King. We entered the theater relaxed and relieved. As soon as the lights went down, my husband and I both fell asleep.
It was the most expensive, but best-earned naps of our lives.
We stayed in Warsaw for nine years. Both of our children graduated from the school, and Poland became home in ways we could not have imagined. When asked about his experience growing up overseas, our son refers to Poland as his “foster country.” This spring, our daughter’s best friend from those Warsaw years will travel from another country to stand beside her as her maid of honor. The roots we hoped our children would have are still holding across years and continents.
Warsaw also changed my path. It was where I moved into formal leadership, work that would eventually lead me back to ISS.
And now, somehow, I find myself on the other side of the story.
For the past three years, I have had the privilege of working for ISS, alongside schools around the world. Now part of the Advisory Services team, I coach curriculum leaders, work with teacher teams to design learning that responds to learner variability, build student agency and joy, help schools strengthen assessment and grading practices, conduct curriculum audits, and facilitate strategic work for learning.
Much of my work is learning alongside people. Teachers, teams, middle leaders, senior leaders. Listening, asking questions, sharing research and possibilities, building something together, and figuring out what comes next.
In some ways, that brings me right back to those professional journals arriving in boxes in Indonesia. Access to new ideas mattered, but the real learning happened when we talked about those ideas together, tried them, and figured out what they meant for our students.
Having an insider’s view of ISS has reconfirmed what I felt all those years ago carrying that enormous directory around the IRC.
The people at ISS care deeply about students, teachers, leaders, and schools. Across all these years, I have watched the ways ISS supports schools evolve as the world and the needs of international schools change.
See a need. Figure out how to help schools meet it.
At the start of this school year, ISS launched a new website and a renewed approach to its services: “Go Forward with ISS.” It feels fitting to me. The tools have changed enormously since that first IRC and so have international schools. But across my own journey with ISS, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: people listening to people, sharing what they know, making connections, and helping one another figure out what comes next.
More than 30 years after I first opened that directory and wondered where in the world we might go, I still recognize the organization that helped my family begin this extraordinary international school journey.
Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep changing. Keep finding ways to make a world of difference.
Here’s to going forward!